"No doubt, ran the report, the situation was of the strangest and gravest description, but the public was exhorted to avoid and discourage panic. No doubt the Martians were strange and terrible in the extreme, but at the outside there could not be more than twenty of them against our millions." (H.G. Wells, _War of the Worlds_)

Are you a word wiz?

We exhort you not to panic, but we do want you to know that only one of the following sentences uses "exhort" correctly. Which one do you think it is?

A. Mom exhorted us to work out our disagreement among ourselves.

B. The newspaper exhorted about events happening at the county fair.

C. We exhorted our camping supplies to the campsite in a canoe.

D. At camp, each older child exhorted a younger camper to the beach.

We exhort you to believe us: A is the right answer because it's the only one that has to do with someone urging people to do something. What about the other sentences? "Exhorted" in each of those sentences needs to be replaced by a similar-sounding word. In B, "reported" is the one that fits; it makes sense that a newspaper would report about something. Sentence C's "exhorted" should be replaced with "transported," since it means "to transfer or convey from one place to another." In sentence D, the word should be "escorted," since the older children are escorting, not exhorting, younger campers to the beach.